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A Nokia sale of mobile, especially to the US, would be nuts
Nokia's hiring of Intel's Justin Hotard to be its new CEO has set tongues wagging again about a mobile exit, but it would look counterintuitive and inadvisable.
Elsewhere in cable land: metered broadband sparks controversy in Canada and retransmission battles smack News Corp.'s bottom line
February 3, 2011
Hulu LLC 's new deal with Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) and other Web video happenings take center stage in today's cable news roundup.
Viacom could squeeze up to US$50 million from Hulu for returning The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to its Web TV lineup. (See Hulu: 'Virtual MSO' in the Making? and Daily Show, Colbert Leave Hulu.)
The Viacom deal was big score for Jason Kilar, but the Hulu CEO may be in hot water with parents Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), Viacom and News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) for penning a blog expressing that Hulu ads are twice as effective as traditional TV spots.
Execs at U.S. MSOs and other broadband ISPs that intend to use metered broadband usage models will be smart to check the reactions to them north of the border, as more Canadian ISPs begin to implement that controversial strategy on March 1. (See Netflix Fears by-the-Byte Tiers and TWC Mothballs New Metering Trials .)
Univision isn't waiting for Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) deployments to add interactive content to a reality series, relying instead on a product placement deal involving Verizon Wireless phones. (See Cable ITV: Is It a Real Business Yet? )
Those retransmission consent spats with Dish Network LLC (Nasdaq: DISH) and Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) cost News Corp. $30 million in second-quarter revenue.
Rupert Murdoch flipped the switch on The Daily, News Corp.'s news app for Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL)'s iPad that some are comparing to the 1982 launch of USA Today.
AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL), Hulu and other websites score easy traffic each year by compiling videos from Super Bowl commercials. We're wondering which cable operator will be the first to create a Super Bowl commercial compilation reel they can put on video-on-demand (VoD). In the meantime, we've got teasers like this one:
— Steve Donohue, Special to Light Reading Cable
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